Overview of EMU Season 1

Here are some stats and details of the first season of the league

The first season ran from 26th September 2023 to 5th December 2023 (approx. 71 days). The number of days in each game-week was increased from 7 to 9 days to allow maximum participation after the second game-week, and nearly reduced to 8 days in the last two game-weeks.

During the 8 game-weeks, we had a total of 230 games (2 other games in the fixtures unfortunately did not happen due to scheduling and timing conflicts, both surprisingly during the first game-week with 9 days). Including spares (and initially tie-breakers and ‘Hawk-eye’ questions), a total of 411 questions (48 × 8 = 384 questions as main questions and 27 others as tiebreakers or spares) were played during the first season.

For the first season of the EMU nature, science and technology quiz league, we had a total of 116 participants (117 if we count an exchange of seats midway), out of which 92.24% (n=107) were familiar with the mimir format, while only 7.76% (n=9) haven’t had played this format before. We were happy to introduce this fun format to the uninitiated. Given that an international mimir league usually has anywhere between 200-400 players per season, but the theme for our league usually represents just around 6-13% every week in such general leagues, that’s an exceptionally great turn out.

We had players joining us from 14 countries, as you can see in the pie chart. As you can see, most players were joining from India, followed by the UK, and then the USA. Besides the countries labelled in the chart, we had one player each from South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Lithuania, France, Switzerland, and Canada.

The following chart shows the age-wise distribution. Since we had a poor turnout of players under 18 years of age (and poor attendance during the league), we are keeping an age cut-off of 18 years starting next season, unless there are a good amount of requests from players under 18. As you can see, most players were between 31-50 years of age, followed by the 18-30 age category, and then by 51-70 age category.

The following are the grand (Tier 1) champions of season one:

The following are the other Tier champions of season one:

The following are the top 5 in various metrics of the season:

Players with the highest weekly Adjusted Differential Scores (ADS):

• Eric Mukherjee - 14.18

• Adheesh Ghosh - 12.87

• manoj saranathan - 11.89

• Seoan Webb - 11.42

• Ishaan Nejeeb - 11.09

Players with the highest overall Adjusted Differential Scores (ADS):

• Eric Mukherjee - 71.13

• Pat Gibson - 65.1625

• manoj saranathan - 61.2525

• Samanth Subramanian - 60.48

• Jimmy Li - 60.02

Players with the highest weekly points:

• Eric Mukherjee - 34

• Gautham Mahadevan - 28

• Ian Bayley - 22

• Sanskriti Dawle - 21

• Sangeeth S V and Eric Mukherjee - 20

Players with the highest overall points:

• Eric Mukherjee - 133

• Samanth Subramanian and Aditya Gangrade - 105

• Pat Gibson - 102

• Jayakanthan R - 100

• manoj saranathan and Jimmy Li - 99

Players with the highest Bonus attempts % (Correct answers during bonus attempts/No. of bonus attempts). This measure indicates very cautious and strategic gameplay:

• Sarah Trevarthen - 92.11 %

• Rajagopal - 91.67 %

• Samanth Subramanian - 91.49 %

• Jayakanthan R - 88.24 %

• Sanat Pai Raikar - 84.31 %

Players with the least Xs in their seat i.e. players with the least amount of unanswered questions in their seat (this indicates higher amount of answering of questions by the players in their own seats):

• Pat Gibson - 9 questions

• Eric Mukherjee - 10 questions

• Jimmy Li - 10 questions

• Reitesh Raman - 11 questions

• Aditya Gangrade - 11 questions

Here’s some statistics on how much of the information from the league was new to a sample of participants:

Here are the theme-wise quads from season 1 (arranged from week 1 to 8):

1. Physical geography:

• National Parks in Jammu and Kashmir

• Visiting famous waterbodies

• Islands of Greece

• Types of coral reefs

• Areography

• Geography in avian binomial nomenclature

• RS & GIS

• Geography of major tectonic plates

2. History and Literature:

• Colonial nomenclature of butterflies in India

• Merchants of Doubt

• Fiction with mammals having 'ole' nomenclature

• Historic crashes and explosions

• Birds in fiction

• Lippershey and optical instruments

• Academic publishing

• David Quammen’s non-fiction

3. Biology:

• Biology of Bateleur Eagles

• Title of medical papers

• Women in genetics

• Biomolecules

• Venom and poison

• Twin-related terms

• Animal locomotion

• Sterilisation-focused veterinary practices

4. Chemistry:

• Materials and their Moh’s scale of hardness

• Alloys

• Chemical reactions

• Food Preservation

• Environmental toxicology involving birds

• Carbon cycle

• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023

• Chemistry in Breaking Bad

5. Physics:

• Elementary particles

• Waves

• Tesla’s ideas

• Astroparticle Physics

• Space probes and space sounds

• Fundamental constants

• Fluid Dynamics

• The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023

6. Engineering and Technology:

• Artificial Intelligence

• Technology in electric vehicles

• Internet of Things

• Technology in Anime

• Pickup trucks

• Tools used in molecular biology

• Boston Dynamics

• Integrated Engineering Concepts

7. Math:

• Eponymously named fractal concepts

• Famous math problems

• The Great Trigonometric Survey of India

• The Cult of Statistical Significance

• Geometry

• Hindustani music and prime numbers

• Branches of algebra

• Math in The Big Bang Theory

8. Movies and TV:

• Contact

• Curie in Radioactive

• Reptiles in James Bond movies

• Sound effects in Star Wars

• Flowers in Bollywood

• The IT Crowd

• Animals in 12 Monkeys

• Mr. Robot

9. Music, Art and Architecture:

• Volcanoes in paintings

• Architecture in science-fiction movies

• Molecular music

• Scientific art of Da Vinci

• Green Features in Sports Venues

• Birdsong and compositions

• Microbial Art

• Utopic Dystopic mega-projects in deserts

10. Mythbusting:

• Flat Earth

• Sugary myths

• James Randi

• Why Darwin Matters

• Dietary Myths

• Venus and Dr. Velikovsky

• Sadhguru’s psuedoscience

• Ancient aliens

11. Social Science and Psychology:

• Psychology of argumentation

• Anthropology

• Psychological experiments

• Ethical questions in conservation

• Mental illnesses of famous people

• Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

• Psychoacoustics

• Unreplicated social science studies

12. Home and Hobbies:

• Gardening and gradient studies

• Computer languages and games

• Philately of Mangroves

• Home appliances

• Camping materials

• Photography in naming of organisms

• Home safety

• Bird homes (nests)